Christmas came and went in a flurry of forgetfulness. We didn’t even have the complete, world-at-a-standstill snowstorms to turn the outside as white as the inside.

The Christmas lunch, though, was special. I think we were given turkey. I say ‘think’ because the only evidence of any change in our dietary delights was that the slop had a little more plop. I also ‘think’ that the roundish, brownish, charcoalish chunks of doughish discs were meant to be Yorkshire puddings. In a previous life, they may well have been. Now, we could have used them for art class, if we had any classes.

Or class, for that matter.

I’m sure Aunt Bessie would have been turning in her grave, or her armchair if she was still living.

They didn’t give us ‘pigs-in-blankets’ though. As much as I enjoy the little bacon-wrapped sausages, I could honestly say I didn’t enjoy, last year, Perry, the young Emo who had taken self harming to levels heretofore unseen, screaming that the pigs were trapped in their own brothers’ carcasses. That seemed to put everyone off their lunch and, once the chaos had calmed, pigs-in-blankets were decidedly off the menu.

They didn’t trim the recreation room. No tinsel was put up for fear of someone strangling themselves – or someone else -with it. There was no tree. You could guarantee it would be used as a pine enema by one patient or another deciding they wanted to be the fairy or star upon its top.

We didn’t have cards (we weren’t allowed pens to write with anyway) and nor did we have the opportunity to have a mass Meadowhall excursion to buy any gifts with. Not that Connors would relinquish his hold on our finances anyway.

Was there any ‘did’ to distil the ‘didn’t’?Jeremy ‘did’ wish us all a Happy Christmas. Jersey ‘did’ take pleasure in telling us all about the sumptuous meal he was apparently going to be having and made a point of commenting that he’d spat in one of our meals and he wouldn’t tell which.

Which, of course, was rubbish as the slop was served from large pans by ladles that seemed very adept at hitting the plate and our clothes (such as the scrubs-like garments were) at exactly the same time however the kitchen staff dolloped it out.

So, that was Christmas in the asylum. A time for giving and for goodwill… somewhere. Methinks the ‘Spirit of Christmas’ is off haunting some other halls.

I don’t why it’s there, humming around like a busy little bee, but it’s irritating the hell out of me.

It was there when I woke up this morning. Usually the glowing white of the walls, floor and everything else doesn’t bother me too much. I’m sort of used to it. Sometimes you feel like you need to walk around with a squint in lieu of a rather fashionable pair of sunglasses, but it’s just background pain. Little needles piercing your eyes, rather than Crocodile Dundee style ‘now this is a knife’ blades hacking away at your inner cortex.

Today, though, I have a pain in my head. My sinuses are playing up, so maybe that’s it. The bridge of my nose feels like it has a steady stream of cars and trucks driving over the stream beneath. Thankfully Mucous Micky is around to help with that. When my sinuses are doing their thing, which is usually a runaway success, I just have to hope my head doesn’t explode from the pressure.

But this pain in my head is different. It’s not the steady throb of a subwoofer pulsing against the back of my eyes to an unheard beat. It’s not the crick that’ll crack if I turn my head just so, sharply enough to make it swim on down the road, almost taking the rest of me with it. It isn’t the moanings of a migraine, attempting to wipe me out for the day so I’ll be holed up in a darkened room.

Not that there is such a thing in the asylum.

It’s like an insect has crawled in my ear and is using the surface of my brain as a trampoline. The bee is bumbling and the beetle is bouncing. Ba-doyng-a ba-doyng.

Interesting how some onomatopoeic words are SO difficult to spell, even though that is what they sound like. Unlike knock-knock. Who’s there? Nobody. Nobody who? No… Actually nobody is there. You’re all alone hunny.

That’s not funny, I know. But oh, so true. In an asylum, no-one cares if you scream.

So.

This pain.

I wonder if Rentokil are like pizza delivery places. You ring them up and they drop by within half an hour or you get the service free. I wonder if they can do anything about this buzzing in my bonce. I wonder where they’d shove the nozzle.

Maybe I’ll just persevere. Although, if it went up my nostril, like Arnie in Total Recall, at least it’d flush out my sinuses.

Ah. The pain is subsiding. Or changing. Morphing as Michael Jackson did at the end of that music video. Which one was it? Black or White? The one with Eddie Murphy in? I forget, but he changed into a panther – black and sleek and pretty damned cool.

Nothing cool about this pain though. I recognise it.

How could I not?

It’s happened again. The whole reason I entered this place was to avoid this. To get pumped full of their drugs so it couldn’t happen again.

But it has.

And it’s not a pain. Well, it is and it isn’t. It’s not MY pain. It’s theirs.

Not that I know my tweet from my elbow, of course. And what an odd name for a social media network (see, I know all the jingo-jango-lingo!). Twitter. And the icon of the bird?

Trust me, I have given people ‘the bird’ in my time – not least certain psychiatrists -and it’s never needed as many as 140 characters. Often far less is required.

I think it’s kind of appropriate, though. Being on Twitter when I’m meant to be cuckoo. If only Jack Nicholson had a computer back in the day, hmmm?

Of course I can’t tell anyone. If Connors found out, he’d go… erm… crazy. He’d be wondering what sort of secrets and revelations I had been revealing to the world. Not that, of course, I’d have any. Not when he’s whiter than the walls and his halo shines brighter than the incandescent lightbulbs that are recessed into the ceiling (I think the heat from them made them sink – if it’s possible to sink upwards…).

About Me

I’ve been writing since I was knee-high to a giraffe. I don’t think I could quite hold a pen when I was nose to knee with a grasshopper, but I was pretty young when I started. It’s been my life-long dream to complete a novel. I had so many ideas and stories that needed to be told, I didn’t really have a choice, and 2011 is the year my first full length novel was finished.
Over the years, I’ve written many stories and poems, and won competitions with a few. I’ve been published in a multitude of magazines and have appeared on Sky TV debating the pros and cons of web based publishing as opposed to the more traditional kind, thanks to an online magazine I used to run – me, who produced an ezine from my home up against one of the main agents for a major literary house. Scary stuff! The magazine drew in submissions from all over the world and gave a showcase to those that either didn’t want to find magazines and other publishers or actually couldn’t. If I liked it, I published it, it was that simple.